


The Home We Built

by MithrilWren



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caduceus gets some TLC, Domestic, Fluff, Future Fic, Getting Closure, Light Angst, Living Together, M/M, Supportive Partners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:28:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21891412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MithrilWren/pseuds/MithrilWren
Summary: “Do you love this place?” Caduceus asks, elbow deep in water, waist deep in murk, hair a flurry of snarls in the salt-soaked air.“I do,” Fjord answers, and steps further out. The ocean rises up to greet him, higher and higher – to his chest, to his neck, to his mouth. “Do you?”“Oh,” says Caduceus. “I could. If I tried.”---Caduceus and Fjord learn what it means to build a life together.
Relationships: Caduceus Clay/Fjord
Comments: 16
Kudos: 127





	The Home We Built

There’s a house, somewhere along the coast – sea-battered walls rising against lichen-sprung shores, seaweed crawling alongside the deck where the surf has only just begun to rise. In the mornings, the gulls cry out and the waves echo back, calling, calling-

“Do you love this place?” Caduceus asks, elbow deep in water, waist deep in murk, hair a flurry of snarls in the salt-soaked air.

“I do,” Fjord answers, and steps further out. The ocean rises up to greet him, higher and higher – to his chest, to his neck, to his mouth. “Do you?”

“Oh,” says Caduceus. “I could. If I tried.”

***

They’ve both tried. The rot won’t stop coming, no matter how much of it they hack away. Fjord’s sword shimmers in the ragged sheet of evening rain, misting fairy light as he makes broad, clean strokes through the twists of gnarled vines that echo the shape of what was once a cabin, a long time ago.

“We should go.” Caduceus says, his hands still embedded in the dirt, tearing up what meagre roots his pockets will hold, before they all crumble to dust. Not so many petals this year.

“There’s still something here.” Another stroke, and the ooze rains down in black torrents, seeping into the soil around Fjord’s feet. “I can feel it.”

“I’ve gotten what I came for.” Caduceus stands. “We can go.”

“You might change your mind,” Fjord reminds him. “You’ve done it before.”

Caduceus sighs. Places the last flower on his tongue. Tastes death, in all its forms.

“Not this time.”

***

There are floorboards to be laid down, holes to be patched, stars to be counted before the night is done. Four hands make light work, and the ocean breaks against the foundation as they build, drowning out the sound of crashing waves in the rain of heavy mallets, and patter of quiet thought.

“It won’t last forever.” Caduceus pulls a flower from his pocket, twines its dried stem into the braid that’s already beginning to curl near the tips – too much moisture on the air. The wood creaks beneath his feet. He’s heavier than he used to be.

“Doesn’t need to. It just needs to last the winter.” Fjord brings down the hammer once more, and the last of the beams falls into place.

“And what about the one after that?”

Fjord shrugs, looks over to the quilt laid atop the bed in the corner. They built the frame before the walls were more than braceboards, before the foundation was laid down along the shore: a promise, to a home not yet finished.

“Then we try again.”

***

“You aren’t going to find it,” Caduceus insists, and Fjord laughs around a mouthful of honey. The orchard buzzes with life, met by the road winding out into the hills beyond – no crystal shores in sight. “If they didn’t, you won’t.”

“Caduceus, that’s not why we’re here.”

The scent of the fruit is sweet, not cloying – ripe, not rotted through – and Caduceus breathes deeply, and listens for the call of birds amongst the trees. The last of the honey drips through Fjord’s fingertips and onto Caduceus’s palm. “We’re here for me?”

Fjord smiles softly. “Now you’re getting it.”

Skin sticky like the summer air, Caduceus draws absentminded circles in the hand that covers his, then places his thumb on his lip, and sucks the nectar down.

***

“If I chose to, would you stay?”

“Yes,” Fjord answers, without hesitation. The rain comes down in patches, washing away the last of the sludge at their feet. The smell of old oak cuts through the decay.

“You don’t love this place.” Caduceus places his hand against the unearthed door, feels the places where the splinters run deep. It’ll need to be replaced, if this house is meant to survive the changing of seasons. “Not like you love the sea.”

Fjord’s boots sink deep into the mud as he steps forward to join Caduceus. “I can love more than one thing at once.”

Caduceus tightens his fist.

“I wouldn’t ask that of you. I wouldn’t ask you to give up the thing you love the most.”

Fjord places his hand against the door, beside Caduceus’s. Their fingers match, in some ways – dirtied to the same hue, and underneath it all, green and grey.

Sea foam.

“Well, I guess I love one thing more.”

***

The walk to town is lined by shale and scattered brush, wild fieldland melting into the rock formations that lead to the ocean’s shoals.

Caduceus pauses on the stoop of a lonely elm, its gnarled trunk the only one in sight for miles. Fjord looks back, curious, the bag over his shoulder not yet laden down with vegetables and legumes and herbs in waxed paper bundles, but still hanging low against his hip.

“Hello,” Caduceus says, looking up at the boughs above his head. The leaves rustle, chirruping in the bright morning air. “How are you, old friend?”

“Can it… hear you?” Fjord asks.

“Oh, yes,” says Caduceus. “She can hear me just fine.” Fjord steps up beneath the tree’s shadow, cocking his head as he touches his knuckles to the bark. “Can you hear her too?”

Fjord’s brow furrows, but a moment later he smiles, lips curling back over the tips of brightened tusks.

“I can hear her.”

“What is she saying to you?”

Fjord steps back, his smile widening with the road ahead. He hefts the bag a little higher onto his shoulder, fingers tight and determined around the leather strap.

“That this would be a good place for a garden.”

***

It’s not here.

All their work – all the painstaking hours, the blessings and incense, the tilling and clearing and miserable nights – and it’s not here. They left for a season, and now everything is gone.

The cabin is gone.

The plants are gone.

Everything is _gone._

Fjord and Caduceus stand on the edge of a graveyard, that was a home, that now is nothing, and Caduceus inclines his head towards the ground, watches the vines shift beneath his feet. He falls to his knees, and places his hands on the places where the flowers used to grow.

“I failed.”

Fjord is there. His hands are there. His eyes are there - watching, reaching, holding.

“I was supposed to save this place.” Caduceus closes his eyes. “I was supposed to save us all.”

Fjord lifts his hand from the ground, and places it over his own chest. The thin shirt he wears isn’t enough to disguise the many scars below, or to cover the raised edges of a ragged cut: an X, just large enough to peel back skin and sinew and draw out something small, and round.

“You did enough, Caduceus. I promise, I _promise,_ you did.”

They stay there for as long as they need to, arm clasped to arm, while all around the snow begins to fall.

And then they go home.

***

There are other voices now, filling the house by the shore. Some shrill, some soft, some crowing louder than the gulls above. They sleep two, three to a bed, like they used to, and there’s a fire drifting smoke along the beach, and the shadow of footsteps on the doorstep, and the smell of cinnamon drifting out from the open window to the little kitchen beyond. There’ll be a plate of pastries set by their feet within the hour.

The two of them rest on the long porch bench – the first piece of furniture they built, after the bed. Fjord lays his head on Caduceus’s shoulder, and Caduceus takes his hand as they settle in to watch the silhouette of friends, new and old, running headlong towards the setting sun, painting haphazard shapes against the horizon. It’ll be night before long, and the house will be crowded, and warm, and _loud._

They’ll need to add more rooms, when spring comes.

But for now, for _now-_

They have time.

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the most... experimental thing I've ever written for this fandom? But the image of the house along the coast wouldn't leave me alone after one of the episodes, a few weeks back, and I've been slowly plucking away at this ever since.
> 
> Come find me at [mithrilwren](https://mithrilwren.tumblr.com) on Tumblr!


End file.
